Diedrich Coffee Roasters Spotlight

It all started after World War II. Karl Diedrich, Sr. immigrated with his family to a Guatemalan coffee farm where they fell in love with the world of coffee.

Shortly after, they moved again to Los Angeles, where the Diedrich name became well known in the coffee world. They drove to Guatemala every year to pick the coffee and cart it back via a Volkswagen caravan.

Three sons followed their father into the coffee world. Karl Jr., to this day, designs the cooling bins used in the roasters. Martin founded Diedrich Coffee, which eventually became part of Keurig/Green Mountain. Steve invented the famous Diedrich roaster 35 years ago that is still highly sought after today.

In 1991, Steve moved his company, Diedrich Roasters, to Sandpoint, Idaho when he grew tired of the LA lifestyle. Twenty-five years later, the company is now employee owned and spans three buildings with plans to break ground on a larger facility shortly. They are growing rapidly and expect to hire more employees soon.

The company is the second largest distributor of roasters in the world. They custom build each roaster from the ground up. Sticklers for excellence they are trying to bring even more of their operations in house to provide the quality they think their customers deserve. They are also the only roaster manufacturer in America to meet and exceed the California and Puget Sound clean air standards. They do this while still retaining a higher BTU per square foot of natural gas than anyone else.

Over the last three years they have been improving their processes to become more standardized. The CR35 was their first consistently developed product, moving away from the thumb-test, looks about right method. They have brought on a talented engineering staff and will be finalizing their ISO 9000 2015 status shortly.

Diedrich is an impressive local company that uses SOLIDWORKS to compete globally. They will be the main model shown at TECH DAY 2017, the region’s best manufacturing event. Come to the event to see how your team can unleash its innovation!